​The state of sports betting in the United States is a bleak one, as mobile sports bettors are prohibited from placing bets with most online sportsbooks. This is what has made the fantasy sports industry so well liked in the US. Classified as a game of skill rather than as gambling, daily fantasy sports contests such as the ones held by DraftKings and FanDuel are deemed legal in the United States and serve as a legal form of sports betting.

In this version of fantasy sports, contests aren't held over the course of a full season like they are in your office fantasy football league, but are instead contested over periods of one week or shorter depending on the sport. With faster turnaround times, players can get involved in more contests per season, giving them the chance to receive more frequent and, due to the large number of entrants in each contest, potentially lucrative payouts.​

DRAFTKINGS - #1 U.S. FANTASY SPORTS COMPETITION APP

DraftKings for Android, iOS & Apple Watch

While DraftKings and FanDuel were battling for fantasy sports betting supremacy as they first gained notoriety, DraftKings has since surpassed FanDuel and has become the leader in the fantasy sports industry. They offer a nice array of sports to enter fantasy contests in, including the NFL, NBA, hockey, soccer, MMA, NASCAR, and even eSports. While their NFL contests are surely the app's bread and butter, it's nice to have a number of options to play on more than just Sundays.

Fully recognizing that the most fun of playing fantasy sports is building your team, DraftKings allows players to put all of the best players in a league onto their team, provided they all fit under the salary cap that each of their fantasy sports contests carry. Within the mobile app, DraftKings makes it easy to sort by projected scoring totals as well as position to make building a lineup quick and easy, keeping the excitement with the player for the duration.

Once a lineup is built, you can enter it into one or multiple contests, contests that can be entered with an entry fee or played for free. Among DraftKings' free contest offerings are freerolls that pay out cash prizes that can then be used to enter more lucrative fantasy sports competitions. DraftKings also offers private contests, which allow players to face off only against their friends for cash, rather than the skilled professionals that tend to be at the top of the bigger contest leaderboards.

On the Apple Watch, DraftKings allows players to keep track of their progress in all of their contests. Players can either look at live updating scores for all contests at once, or can select an individual contest to see how their individual players are performing in that specific lineup.

FANDUEL - POPULAR DAILY SPORTS COMPETITION APP

FanDuel Daily Sports Competition App

FanDuel, while no longer as highly regarded as DraftKings, has a strong app offering for iPhone and Android fantasy sports betting. Looking to appeal to new players, they are offering a promotion called the FanDuel Five Pack to new players, granting them entry into five NFL contests for new players only, contests that pay the top half of players rather than just a select few elite finishers.

Set up similarly to DraftKings, FanDuel players are able to select the contests they want to enter, and either set multiple lineups or use one lineup across multiple contest. Once a contest has started, live updating stats and an on-screen visualization lets players see how they are performing relative to their competition and, more importantly, let them see where they are in relation to the positions in the contest that will result in a cash payout. FanDuel's Friends Mode is similar to DraftKings' private leagues, where players can play with their friends only, and pick new teams each week for cash prizes. You can download the betting apps in Canada, the UK and the United States.

On the Apple Watch, FanDuel allows players to see how many lineups they have playing at a given time, as well as how much money those lineups are generating at the present moment in their respective contests. If none of the lineups are entered in an active contest at the time, the app will show the amount of time remaining until those contests begin. One thing that is sorely lacking from the FanDuel Apple Watch app, though, is the ability to look at a specific lineup and see live point totals for all of your players, which prevents people from seeing where exactly they went wrong for future reference.